Google tends to do incremental tested rollouts with many of their features, and they appear to be testing a feature which might help users identify websites that have a mobile optimized version when browsing through Google search results from a smartphone or tablet. Although this seems like something that may have or should have been around years ago, sometimes things like this just take a backseat to other things. After reading about this ourselves we checked it on a few of our own handsets and weren’t met with the same results as what’s being talked about(meaning that we didn’t see the icon pop up next to the webpage URL)which is essentially the identification of mobile optimized websites using a little mobile phone icon in the list of search results.

Google is apparently testing this feature which means that it probably isn’t rolled out for most people, it also means that it may never see an actual launch, however we certainly hope they make this a permanent thing and roll it out in full to everyone somewhere down the line. If you feel like checking to see if this is there on your own mobile browsing experience, open up Chrome and do a quick Google search for something. Although we imagine that you might have noticed something like this pop up already as the icon isn’t too small and is easily noticeable.

We know this isn’t hard evidence regarding the new Nexus phone, but something like this, even as small as it is, is useful in its own right and could make it easier for people to browse the web on their smartphones if they want to avoid site that have a mobile optimized version of the website. As Android Police has pointed out, Google told them the feature was only in testing, so like we stated above we might never see this feature come to fruition. This wouldn’t be the first time we saw a tested feature either disappear or take a while to reach the majority, and it probably won’t be the last. What are your thoughts on this potential new feature? Would it be more useful to have this icon pop up next to the URL in your search results?